Societal Suicide

-


Today's i reports of an exodus of NHS staff after two years of pandemic aggravated strife within our medical service, citing stress and poor work/life balance, mental health issues, and I can also report, issues with poor management as a direct result of the insanity of the pseudo-privatised health board structure the NHS has been burdened with for so many years now.

I know the health boards of Wales are (ironically, given its inception at the hands of the great Aneurin Bevan) amongst the worst performing in the UK, but the fault for for that lies squarely on the shoulders of the half-assed system and its endless tiers of under-performing, self-interested and frankly hapless management. It's no wonder that the real talent are leaving in droves under the strain of trying to make things work: health care is vocational, not a fucking business - end of argument - and health care professionals have been unfairly backed into a corner where the only choice is 'performance' over people's lives. Not on. Needs sorting, ASAP.

In the same issue, the paper reports a senior Tory MP admitting that trying to support a family on £25,000 a year is "unsustainable", a figure that would astound those trying to live on well less than £20,000 per year and which just exceeds the starting salary for an NHS nurse. With Doris Pooh intent on raising National Insurance across the board (affecting mostly the lower paid in society) and his billionaire Chancellor resistant to scrapping VAT on fuel to assist those of who will be most sorely tried by the impending, catastrophic hike in domestic fuel costs, one wonders which one of these fatheads, nay, drags on society, is the most dangerous. Watch out for the pitchforks, chaps, they're waiting in the wings...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [
Read more